Video Game Conventions

ScrewAttack Gaming Convention is going on right now, and some news relevant to longtime Destructoid readers has come out of it. Our old pal Jim Sterling put on Jimquisition Live there, and he made a few announcements during t...

Are you super into RuneScape? Are you hoping to go to the RuneFest convention in London this October? Apparently, you can now pay for your tickets, accommodation and flights if you're ludicrously rich in virtual currency.
So,...

Cosplay videos are always challenging, especially when you're at a show where you don't recognize half the characters. I don't watch a whole lot of anime, but I wanted to see if I could make an interesting video nonetheless! ...

Did you go to Minecon in London this weekend? Did you take literally everyone you know with you? Well congratulations, in doing so, you and everyone else have broken a world record!
According to Guinness World Records, Mineco...

What a yearIt's the moment you've all been waiting for: the time to vote for your favorite game of E3!
Click below and make your selection, then tell us about it in the comments! There's certainly no shortage of AMAZING games to choose from this year!

In early August, hundreds of thousands of people will descend upon Cologne, Germany for gamescom, the largest videogame trade show on the planet. Publishers and platform owners will have plenty to announce with all game enthu...

There are a few glorious, magical days where the Destructoid UK team gets to actually write about news from the UK. They happen very rarely, but thankfully the stars have aligned and today is one of those days. God save the b...

If you've been following the news over the past few years, then you are keenly aware of the debate and divide that gay rights has caused. Unfortunately, there is a segment of our population that wants to deny others their rig...

PAX East 2015 is happening RIGHT NOW! And just like years past, the Destructoid community is there in a big, big way.
Did you make the trek to Boston this year? Then check out our daily meetup schedule below! And be sure to j...

Mar 05 //
Mike Cosimano[embed]288640:57626:0[/embed]
DyscourseDeveloper: Owlchemy LabsPublisher: Owlchemy LabsRelease date: March 25, 2015
"[Dyscourse] is a story that happens to be about survival," Schwartz clarified. In Dyscourse, you play as Rita, an artist turned barista who has crash landed on a deserted island with a motley crew of "useless tourists." By virtue of being the player character, Rita will determine the group’s focus, be it escape attempts or long-term survival plans. Is your time better spent gathering water or building a giant SOS out of driftwood? It’s a very basic risk/reward system, but what sets the game apart is just how different each playthrough will be.
There are no superficial choices. When a character is injured or insulted, that will affect how effective they will be. There’s even unique character models for exhaustion, described by Schwartz as multiple levels of "dishevelment." Since each in-game day contains multiple opportunities for physical exertion and mental exhaustion, there's a good chance you could end a day with a dead survivor, or at least a very incapacitated one. Post-day conversations allow you to potentially mend broken bridges. However, broken bones are another story.
According to Schwartz, the game contains an enormous amount of content. “There are about 80,000 English words in the game,” Schwartz said. “So if an American novel is about 100,000, our writer basically wrote a full novel.” A standard playthrough will only see around 15% of that 80,000.
It also seems like the team at Owlchemy has succeeded in making their characters feel memorable. Schwartz recounted an anecdote from earlier in the week where a GDC attendee was praising a survivor’s competence, when a total stranger who had demoed the game earlier in the week stopped to accost the attendee. In the other person’s mind, that survivor was bringing the whole group down.
I played Dyscourse on an Xbox One controller hooked up to a PC running a “near-final” build of the game. It played quite well, leading me to ask whether the game was headed to consoles. According to Schwartz, they’re “talking to everybody” about bringing the game to other platforms, but right now they’re focusing on the Steam version. They have to be focused; the game comes out in just under three weeks.
I’ll certainly be giving Dyscourse a look when it comes out. The game’s sense of humor really works for me and the art style is memorable.
There’s also a free expansion planned, starring a host of indie developers (Tim Schafer, Rami Ismail, and more) who get stranded on the island on their way to GDC. In my mind, that’s the real reason to pick up the game. The branching stories and clever dialogue seems like a nice bonus.

It's also not Early AccessOwchemy Labs’ Alex Schwartz is one of the bravest men I know. In the midst of GDC, perhaps the most inside baseball-heavy of all conventions, he told a member of the press that Dyscourse was a "survival game." Of c...

Today, Amazon-owned videogame streaming service Twitch.tv announced a convention "dedicated to Twitch’s community of partners, broadcasters, and viewers." The show will run from September 25-26, 2015 in San Francisco at...

Dec 09 //
Brett Makedonski
David Jaffe's segment of the keynote was met with a mass exodus to the side of the room, as people learned the show floor was opening.
After the first few hours, it almost seemed like Sony had bit off more than it could chew with this outing. The convention still felt like a success, but it was impossible to ignore the enormity of the hall that was rented, with a fair amount of empty space in all directions. This was more apparent after some of the crowd started to filter out.
The PlayStation Experience's strengths were predictable in that they're the platform's strengths -- first-party titles and indie developers. The first-party games like The Order: 1886, Until Dawn, and Bloodborne were presented with the most elaborate booths and seemed to have the most buzz about them. The indie developers, lined up along the length of one side of the hall, provided dozens of quality-looking titles one after another.
However, the presence of third-party publishers was mostly laughable. Aside from a few exceptions such as Battlefield Hardline, almost every booth was made up of already released games. But, that's sort of the issue with throwing a convention in December. Most titles these companies want to promote have already released, and it's mostly too soon to show off builds of 2015 games unless they're set for quarter one.
Swag bags, baby. Swag bags.
So, the result was there just wasn't all that much for convention-goers to play in the way of triple-A games. Hopefully most of them spent a lot of time in the indies section, because there was plenty of gold there. It just may not have been what they were looking forward to when they originally planned the trip.
Even though PlayStation fans go nuts for many first-party exclusives, no game had anywhere near the longest line at PlayStation Experience. That distinction goes to the queue for swag bags, as it snaked through a roped-off area and then stretched along the wall of the massive room. The second longest line was probably to play Project Morpheus, as many looked to relish the opportunity to get a first-hand look at a virtual-reality experience.
By the time the second day rolled around, attendance appeared to have taken a significant dip. It wasn't sparsely populated, but moving about the show floor wasn't at all a hassle, and it just didn't have the feel of a major show any more.
Second day looked different than the first.
What persisted from day one was the general atmosphere of the PlayStation Experience. Everyone seemed to be in a great mood, and there was just a raw sense of enthusiasm that hung over the entire weekend. Several people compared it to the early days of PAX, before PAX became as overwhelmingly large as it is now. It was just people who were happy to play videogames.
That's why PlayStation Experience was my favorite convention this year -- not because it was the best convention, but because it felt like the most positive show that everyone was genuinely excited to be at. It was a phenomenal first showing for Sony in that sense. If the organizers can scale this up slowly year-by-year while still evoking that attitude, Sony will have something special in PlayStation Experience.

Not bad for a first tryI've been to a lot of videogame conventions this year. From the relatively small BitSummit to the monstrosity that is gamescom, I've pretty much seen them all. I didn't think this past weekend's trip to Las Vegas would result...

The EarthBound fanbase is an ever growing blob of sweetness and joy. Just when you think you've seen how far it can go, it gets even bigger and even more happy. Did you know that the game was #10 on the Wii U eshop charts las...

The Dream of the 70s-90s is alive in PortlandIf you live in the Pacific Northwest, perhaps you attended the fifth annual Portland Retro Gaming Expo which took place the weekend before last. If you didn't, well -- here's a lovely pile of photos that the talented Geoffrey...

CCP holds a few events for fans of EVE Online every year. Alongside Fanfest in Iceland, EVE Vegas is one of the major spectacles and it's kicking off today. If you aren't fortunate enough to be in Sin City to celeb...

Pilots in EVE Online might feel like they're on top of the world when they're flying their spaceships through the galaxy, but if they want the full and authentic treatment, they have to make a voyage to Iceland for Fanfe...

GX3: Everyone Games has eclipsed its $80,000 Kickstarter goal with more than two days to spare. The convention will return to San Francisco in late 2015, where the organizers endeavor to provide a safe space for "everyon...

[Update: Our big party is tonight! Hope to see you there!]
PAX Prime 2014 is happening right now!
We're armed to the teeth with meetups scheduled for Thursday, Friday, Sunday, and Monday, a badass party we're co-hosting with ...

GaymerX aims to return in 2015 as GX3: Everyone Games. The convention, focused on building a safe space for everyone, is rebranding itself to be more inclusive toward marginalized folks and allies that may not necessarily ide...

Ubisoft seemingly takes the same approach to all of its PAX showings -- theater presentations of Assassin's Creed, and playable demos of its other upcoming games. PAX Prime 2014 in Seattle next week is no different, except fo...

GameStop is celebrating Batman's 75th year with several events at GameStop Expo 2014. Players can get hands-on early access to LEGO Batman 3: Beyond Gotham by TT Games, for one, and Arkham Knight fans will be able to see and ...

Assassin's Creed Rogue may have only been officially announced for an entire day now, but Ubisoft already has plans to let fans try it out in the very near future. If you happen to be at gamescom in Cologne, Germany next...

It shouldn't take anyone by surprise that there are going to be a lot of people at gamescom. After all, it's one of the world's largest videogame conventions. One of the trade show's four days is officially at capacity, howev...

The re-branded EGX London (formerly the Eurogamer Expo) has announced the first batch of games that will be playable on the show floor.
There's no big surprises as publishers have broken out the big guns like Evolve, Alien: ...

Quake Live players from all over the world will be competing for money and ego at QuakeCon 2014. The event is being held at the Hilton Anatole in Dallas, Texas.
Players will be competing from a prize pool of more than $40,000...

Hironobu Sakaguchi is making an appearance at Japan Expo next Wednesday, during which he'll discuss his prolific career and a secret project he's got in the works. I'm hoping it's a Final Fantasy kind of secret, you know what...

I've heard nothing but good things about the LGBTQ focused convention GaymerX, and I had hoped to make it out at some point to see what it was all about. But according to the con's official Twitter account, GaymerX2, set to t...

Penny Arcade heads Mike Krahulik and Jerry Holkin have announced "PAX South," a brand new expo to be held in San Antonio, Texas. Not many details were given outside of those parameters, but my guess is it'll function jus...

Update! Our meetup dates/locations for Friday and Saturday have changed. (E&C is now on Saturday.) See below for more details!
PAX East 2014 is just a week away in two days TODAY! As is the case every year, the Dtoid comm...